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26 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail, Running

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Cincinnati Chili, Jalapeno Poppers, Kenosha Pass

The best shower is the one you take after two nights of camping.  I’m finally clean enough to touch my keyboard.  Ellie and I camped out this weekend with friends in the Pike National Forest along Hwy 285.  I went for my first high altitude mountain trail run in forever.  This was somewhere between 6 and 8 miles along FR 120, keeping on the FR 121C branch that follows the North Fork of the South Platte River to its headwaters below Handcart and Gibson Peaks.

The trail was essentially a rough 4×4 wheel drive road – really rough.  There were numerous sections under water from a recent heavy rain causing me to bushwhack through the trees which was easy enough.  The steepness wasn’t easy though; about 2000 feet of elevation gain in a little over 3 miles.  I ran the first mile, maybe further, then mostly walked.  The view of the Continental Divide grew more clear around each bend and pulled me up the road until it ended above treeline at the Missouri Mine – long abandoned and apparently radioactive if one is to believe the warning signs.

I was able to trot back down slowly, the footing was too treacherous to wind it out on my return.  The wind was cold and prompted me to finish up before getting caught in a downpour.  I was able to toss some river water on my face and towel off, but had to rely upon hand wipes for my shower.  This was the start of the weekend camp-out.  Most of us went on a hike the next morning along the Colorado Trail from the Kenosha Pass Trailhead.  This is a really pretty hike through heavy Aspen groves.  The leaves were just starting to turn.  I can only imagine the color two or three weeks from now.  Scott invited the gang up to his home in Breckenridge in late September which is just over the Divide from this hike, so I’ll find out soon enough.

We had perfect weather this weekend along with incredible eats.  The bacon-wrapped Jalapeno Poppers – harvested from Scott’s garden – were my favorite.  The Cincinnati Chili was as satisfying as it sounds.  The kids played Warriors and Hunger Games in the woods along the river with a little Star Wars light saber dueling to complete their trilogy of adventure.  Awesome weekend.

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CT Cronica: Foothills

15 Sunday May 2011

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail

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CT, Fairplay, foothills, garmin, Kenosha Pass, Myoplex, puerco pibil, The North Face Sport Hiker

Between traveling to Austin to visit your mom for Mother’s Day and work, it’s been a long week.  You were up late Friday, and likely drank a bit more than you should have considering you have a 15 mile trail run today on segment 5 of the Colorado Trail.  But you’re up by 5am and out the door by 5:30 for the drive to Kenosha Pass on Hwy 285.  This drive is less eventful than your last journey this way.  You stop in the Aspen Park King Soopers again to stock up on trail food and drinks.  The drive from Aspen Grove to Conifer is in thick fog and you have to drive under the speed limit.  But the sun comes out and you figure the weather is shaping up to make for an awesome day.  You’re excited to finish this segment because it will mark the completion of the first section to the Colorado Trail – the foothills.

You pick up Tumbleweed at the Kenosha Pass Trail Head.  This is a convenient car shuffle to the Long Gulch Trail Head where you start segment 5.  As always, the first order of business is to determine how to gear up.  You both expect the snow will be minimal and that it might warm up significantly.  You both dress fairly light. You take further gear risks by leaving your gloves and YakTrax in the car, along with your gators.  You’re trying out a new hip pack on this run, the North Face Sport Hiker, and it won’t easily hold as many extra clothes as your pack.  You pull on a light pair of Under Armour running tights, two shirts, similar to last time with a thin nylon undershirt and cold weather gear top over that.  A runner’s hat and sunscreen complete your preparation and you launch off for the final segment east of Hwy 285.

This weekend was nearly cancelled due to a fire started the previous weekend.  Monday and Tuesday was bad news but then a cold front came in and dropped snow and freezing rain for two days in a row – squelching the fire.  You drove past fire fighters on the trail head road and you wonder if you’ll see any traces of damage on the trail.  The trail conditions are simply spectacular.  The dirt is soft with moisture and the trees make for a cozy feel to the trail.  After a slow start up a particularly steep beginning slope, Tumbleweed has warmed up and sets a strong pace.  The trail is ideal and looks like it should be run fast, but you falter.  You can’t believe how heavy your legs feel.  Last night’s drinks?  Perhaps.  More likely the long week.  You missed 3 days of running, the most in a row in over a year.  You did run yesterday and maybe you haven’t fully recovered.  Nope.  It’s your hip pack.  The weight is killing you.  You feel strapped to the ground, fighting to clear the rocks with each step.  You fall behind.

This new hip pack is a problem.  Your water bottle fell out and a second water also dropped that you didn’t hear and is now lost.  You’re not overly concerned about liquids because you don’t expect it to get hot, and you’re comfortable you still have enough water.  You determine the bottles are too big for the pack’s pockets and carry the bottle in your hand.  You resolve to drink it early to get rid of it.  You stop after 1.5 miles to adjust your gear, removing a shirt.  You take a slightly longer stop at 2 miles and remove your tights.  You finish the water and store the empty in your pack.  You take out an extremely heavy protein sports drink, EAS Myoplex, and carry that in your hand – with the plan to drink that as quickly as possible too.  You alternate holding it in each of your hands as it quickly tires your arm.  You don’t whine about it though, instead you think it’s nice that you’re getting an upper body workout in with this run.

But the hip pack continues to bog you down with weight.  You adjust it lower, then higher, then lower again.  You figure it’s still an awesome pack, and you just need to learn how to pack it and best position it on your hips.  Clearly, you will need small waters.  And this pack might not work on all segments.  It never feels comfortable the entire run, and you miss your old back pack.  While the pack is a gear failure, your GPS promises to not disappoint.  It calls you at programmed intervals – each mile – with a small vibration.  You have a new trail spirit seemingly running along with you.  You refer to this spirit as Garmin.  Garmin’s synchronous calls are comforting as they provide you with precise time and pace information.  Garmin’s only shortcoming is its inability to load waypoints, but this trail is so easy to read it’s not a biggie.  You look forward to reviewing Garmin’s digital trail tracks after the run.

These charts are great.  The top chart shows your pace and is aligned with the elevation chart immediately below it.  You can adjust the display so that both show time or distance, but it’s not really necessary given their alignment.  The charts show that you start off slowly with the trail’s initial steepness.  And you spot your rest periods at 1.5 miles, 2 miles, etc., as the pace falls dramatically and is noted by big dips in the chart.  Likewise, hills illustrated in the elevation chart correspond to a slower pace in the timing chart.  You expect further fun searching for correlations among the two chart’s patterns.

You encountered a hiker, which has been rare to date on the previous segments, within the first few miles.  And after 11 miles you discover the fire and numerous firefighters protecting against flareups.  You’ve never seen the effects of a forest fire so closeup immediately after the event before.  It’s evident how the firefighters either dug fire lines or leveraged the trail to stem the flames.  The dark ground in these pictures represent the burn between miles 11 and 13.  You can still feel heat rising from the scorched earth on the left side of the trail.  The lone hiker and firefighters were all you saw today.  Very soon now the trail is bound to become more crowded.

Despite your rough start today with the gear failure weighing you down, and possible hang over, you eventually loosen up and have a fast run on mile 7 – covering that segment in under 9 minutes.  The chart shows it to be mostly downhill.  Not surprising but even the downhills hurt today.  Your muscles don’t immediately transition from running uphill to downhill.  Your legs are becoming hard however.  These hills are getting you in shape.  Tumbleweed suggests running the Goldenleaf Half Marathon in Aspen in September as a way to celebrate your trail fitness.  Based on his performance today, he should be competitive in his 50-54 yr old age division.  He finishes today a couple of minutes in front of you on the wide gravel road that leads to Kenosha Pass Trail Head.

You struggled today with heavy gear, grogginess, tight muscles from a long week, and pain from pronation in your left foot.  You celebrate your relief for the finish with a couple of shots from a flask that magically appears from Tumbleweed’s car.  Camper’s provisions.  This completes not just segment 5, but the foothills section of the Colorado Trail.  About 70 plus miles.  Future segments will vary dramatically.  Segment 6, the longest at over 30 miles, will take you over the Continental Divide at Georgia Pass.  The rise in elevation and increase in steep grades will bring about much more walking.  Running will become less common.  In fact, you’ll likely wear hiking shorts, if not pants, rather than running shorts.  The pockets will be nice.  And you’ll carry your snow shoes, at least for the next segment which is buried in snow.

After picking up your car from the Long Gulch Trail Head, you drive into Fairplay with plans to lunch at the Brown Burro.  Tumbleweed has eaten there before and it comes with strong reviews.  You stop in front of the place and see that it is closed.  This is a few blocks off Hwy 285, on Hwy 9 that leads into Breckenridge.  So the decision is made to drive into Breck, there will be no shortage of open eateries there.  But after driving maybe a block, you sight a German Bakery – the Beary Beary Tastee Bakery – and you decide to give it a shot.  Good call.

In addition to award winning breads, they have a decent lunch menu.  Having just expended 1900 calories on the trail, you order both a bowl of red bean chili and a sirloin cheese burger with iced tea.  The servings are generous and flavor outstanding.  Since this is a bakery, you should try their dessert.  You order apple pie á la mode, Tumbleweed selects the blueberry pie.  These pies are to die for and you award this bakery with a puerco pibil award for their desserts.  The bonus to this great lunch is the owner who chats with you throughout the meal on her hiking and hunting exploits.  She’s a retired police officer and you sense she could tell you stories ’till the cows come home.  Fun place.

You plan segment 6 with Tumbleweed.  It could be done in two days but you are anxious to complete your first ultra distance event.  You believe you’ll be able to drop off provisions at a trail head somewhere part way to reduce your load, like you did on segments 2 and 3.  You plan for Memorial Day weekend.  It’s not even summer yet and you’re set to begin the second section of the Colorado Trail.

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CT Cronica: slEd dog emerges

24 Sunday Apr 2011

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail

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Bailey, Colorado Trail, Coney Island, Kenosha Pass, Long Gulch, post-holing, REI Gators, Sled Dog, tattoo, Tumbleweed, YakTrax

Saturday starts Friday.  As you print out maps of directions to the Long Gulch Trailhead and google nearby restaurants, your mind is on the trail early.  During drinks and brats later that evening, your neighbor friends ask you about the next morning’s hike and you detail the area around Hwy 285 and Kenosha Pass.  You return home after 9pm and assemble your gear.  You expect snow so you load up.  Saturday, you wake a bit earlier than for other hikes since you need to drive further than previous segments.  You’re out the door by 5:30 am – driving through falling snow.  Vics doesn’t open for another half hour so you figure you’ll grab a coffee in Aspen Park.

After turning off 470 onto Hwy 285, you call your mom at 6am.  You call her most Saturdays although not this early, but there won’t be any other opportunity today.  Besides, it’s 7am her time and old people get up early.  She’s crying.  She’s too weak to talk, but says enough.  She tells you her doctor setup a visit for her with a Pulmonary doctor for Wednesday.  The steroids aren’t working anymore and she has to stop them due to the side effects.  The doctor told her she needs to make plans.  You want to cry too but you don’t.  A few minutes after you hang up, with your mind wandering, you feel all four tires lose traction.

Your Honda Accord is no longer gripping the road, there’s no point in steering.  You remove your foot from the accelerator, and although you don’t move the steering wheel, you keep your hand on it with a light touch.  You’re drifting toward the median, which is a small ditch between your two lanes and the two oncoming lanes.  You feel the car spinning and figure it’s ok as long as it keeps sliding along on your side of the ditch.  You spin 180 degrees and are now sliding backwards, but still on the road.  Your speed has slowed marginally but you feel you are continuing to spin.  You turn the wheel a bit to reverse the spin but that doesn’t work.  You feel yourself drifting toward the ditch in the median, and the car is continuing to spin.  You nudge the car a bit in the direction of its spin thinking you might be able to handle the ditch if you’re facing forward down the hill.  The ditch is covered in snow and probably grass so you might gain traction.  You don’t really know but you just want to get turned around because driving backwards – whether in control or not – is never good.  The nudge works to accelerate the spin without over-correcting and you’ve now spun 360 degrees and are still in your lane.  But now you’re drifting towards the right side of the road which has a similarly sized ditch after the shoulder, and is bordered by a tall rocky cliff.   That’ll leave a mark.

Your car is slowing but still sliding and you need to decide whether to turn and accelerate out of the ditch, or let the car ride into the ditch.  Important decision but less critical now that you’re not facing a slide into on-coming traffic.  Turning against the slide didn’t work earlier, and accelerating out of a spin only works in the movies.  You don’t make an immediate decision; instead you watch as you slowly slide into the cliff wall.  You’re saved by the fact that the car is still spinning, and you give the wheel another nudge to accelerate the spin.  It works and you’re again facing backwards – a full 540 degrees of spin – with maybe 10 feet still remaining between your driver’s side door and the cliff.  This last spin slows the car and it comes to a near rest without you ever having touched the brakes – which you now apply for a full stop.  The car’s nose is pointed against traffic and slightly lower than its rear.  You first try backing out but the tires spin, so you leverage the weight of the car and drive forward out of the ditch.  As soon as you’re back on the road, you see the semi bearing down on you in your rear view mirror.  You punch the accelerator and risk losing traction again.  A mile later you pull into the King Soopers in Aspen Park for some coffee.  The car is fine, you’re a wreck.

The remaining drive to Kenosha Pass is slow and dangerous.  The plows are out and you hope the roads are safer when you drive home.  You see Tumbleweed in his car at the junction of Hwy 285 and Lost Park Road (forest road 56).  He asks if you’re still up for this given the weather.  Yes, you are.  You’re not you anymore.  Your trail spirit began a segment or two ago to take the shape of a trail dog and now you’re Sled Dog.  You can’t quite remember all the reasons this is your trail name, but you just know it’s the right trail spirit for you.  Your trail persona will fully emerge in today’s 16.6 mile slog through ice and snow.

You dressed well for the snowfall – or as you refer to such spring snow showers –  a Colorado slow rain.  You strap on Yaktrax over your La Sportiva trail shoes.  Above that you’ve already attached your REI Gators.  For leggings you have on Nike Dri-fit running shorts and a pair of Under Armour tights.  You layer two shirts – first a thin nylon type of Under Armour Heat Gear and second a thicker Under Armour All Weather Gear.  Gloves, fleece skull cap and a light jacket complete your ensemble.  You have extra dry clothes in your pack.  You start off running.  It’s a gradual uphill.  The video below captures the start of segment 4.

You rest after about a mile and a half and evaluate your clothing.  Tumbleweed removes a cotton sweatshirt and vents his snow pants.  After starting off a bit chilly, both of you have warmed up a great deal.  You tuck your jacket into your pack and keep everything else on.  For the rest of the run, all you’ll ever change are your hat and gloves – pulling them off and on again numerous times.  Once again, you demonstrate experience with a good call on gear.

But you credit a trail spirit with your best call of the day.  Your Yaktrax have been gathering clods of snow and intermittently scraping the snow balls from the soles of your feet is annoying.  You hear Gadget Girl tell you a story from another run where she developed an acute injury from running with clumps of snow under the arches of her shoes.  You listen and you remove the YakTrax.  You knock off the snow and ice against a metal sign on a tree.  To their credit, the treads are extremely light and fit easily into your pack.

Like last week, this trail seems to forever be climbing uphill.  Combined with the snow, which is fresh powder and seemingly deeper, running becomes difficult and you walk large portions.  When you’re finally running downhill, it surprises and hurts your quads.  You don’t know the terrain under the snow.  Rocks are dangerous and holes elicit grunts of unanticipated pain.  This is fairly slow downhill running by your normal standards.   Eventually, you gain momentum and begin to soar downhill, but it ends suddenly with a wipe-out where both of you lose your legs to the snow covered ice.

Slogging through deep snow wears on you and the day has become long.  It took several hours to pass through a 7 mile valley – or Long-assed Gulch as you’ll call it from now on.  You refer to the trek as the Nebraska Expedition because the blowing snow and your fatigue made scenery appear black and white and you were reminded of a Bruce Springsteen album.  As the trail begins to slope upward again, you put your YakTrax back on.  The timing of that gear change-up is perfect as the snow and ice are continuous and the trail mostly cuts across a steep slope with significant exposure to a downhill tumble. 

The sky might be clearing but there’s still not enough sun to know what time of day it is without looking at your iPhone clock.  You’ve been running for four hours and are on pace to finish in about six hours.  Man, two more hours of intermittent, soul-crushing post-holing.  You’re starving.  You stop and eat an uncelebrated power bar.  You want real food.  The final miles are entirely lead by Tumbleweed as you can’t see the trail; partly because your sunglasses are too dark and partly because you don’t have the experience to even see it covered in snow.

Because you’re walking much more of this trail than previous segments, you talk more with Tumbleweed.  You converse about Easter, your mom, your harrowing drive, and about how these are really just the foothills to the CT.  Tumbleweed considers the foothills to end on the western side of highway 285 – on segment 6 where you’ll cross the Continental Divide.  Segment 6 is over 30 miles.  You make that and you’re getting a tattoo.  Or something.

You’re fairly amazed with yourself for nearly completing 4 segments of the CT in April.  You say nearly because today’s hike isn’t yet finished.  Tumbleweed says most hikers don’t start until much later, some as late as June.  But those are hikers who take it straight through.  Five weeks of non-stop hiking.  His plan though is to run the segments on weekends.  And you hope to participate in as much of it as you can.  Your plans initially were to just do the first segment or two, but now you’re hooked.  You’re seriously considering running the entire CT now.  In fact, you can’t imagine not doing the segments along the Collegiate Peaks.  Of course there’s no visibility today from the snow, but you’re not even close to where the good views begin.

You’re on the final stretch to the Long Gulch Trailhead.  The trail is steep here and you serpentine downward.  The switchbacks are hard to see in the powder but Tumbleweed has the eyes of a hawk and has guided you through 16 miles of snow covered trail.  You shuffle into the trail head exhausted.  Once again, you agree to stop at the first place you see that appears open for lunch.

This turns out to be the Coney Island Hot Dog Stand in Bailey.  You’re hungry and nothing sounds better than a dog or burger.  You enter into a place out of time.  You’re suddenly in a ’50s or ’60s boardwalk style diner.

You order onion rings, an Elk Jalapeno Dog, a chili cheese burger and Diet Coke.  You eat the onion rings while the rest of your order is prepared.  The place is actually packed and the only free seating is outside – which is nice.  You attack the Elk Jalapeno Dog first.  When you are this starved for calories, the flavor of food is elevated to the extreme and you ravish your plate.  While eating you discuss plans for the remainder of the CT.  A lot remains – over 400 miles in 24 segments.

Tumbleweed would like to complete the trail in September.  This means you’ll need to double up the shorter segments and start camping the nights as Tumbleweed does now.  You determine to work out a schedule to make this happen.  You didn’t have summer plans a month ago, but now you’re committed to run as much of this trail as possible with Tumbleweed.  Each segment is such an intense experience.  Today will be remembered for trudging through the snow.  Many times you were knee deep in stale, crunchy powder.  It’s safe to expect more days like today as you’ll be chasing the snow melt.  You learned the value of wearing gators.  They not only keep snow out of your shoes, they keep your shins warm.  You’ve already learned a great deal about proper gear.  A small tent might be your next purchase.

Tumbleweed drives you to your car and you part ways.  Your next get together will be segment 5, and your last trek along the CT foothills of Hwy 285.  You call your sister driving home to talk about your mom.  Sandy just spoke with her and she’s feeling much better.

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